Configuring WAN Monitor

Prerequisites

OpManager Nexus primarily relies on Cisco's IP-SLA for monitoring the WAN and the prerequisite therefore is that the device should be a Cisco router and must have IPSLA agent enabled on it. Almost all the routers from Cisco were enabled with IPSLA agent and we support from IOS version 12.3 or later. OpManager Nexus uses SNMP to query the Cisco routers for the links' performance data. IPSLA familiarity is not a prerequisite. You just need to tell OpManager Nexus which links you want to monitor. OpManager Nexus provides an intuitive configuration wizard to help you configure all the IPSLA parameters for monitoring the WAN health.

Steps to set up the WAN Monitor

Using OpManager Nexus, you can now monitor the availability and latency of a WAN link / path. A WAN link mentioned here is the path between the router in your main office and the one in the branch office that you wish to monitor.

Step 1 : Add ( / discover) the router in your LAN to OpManager Nexus. And make sure the  snmp read and write community are configured properly, for that router.

Step 2: Configuring the Router to send traps

Configure the cisco router to send traps to OpManager Nexus. Alerts are shown based on the traps received in OpManager Nexus. To configure OpManager Nexus server as the SNMP Server receiving traps for the routers, telnet the router and type the following command:

snmp-server host <opmanagerPlus server IP> traps <host community string> rtr

For instance, if the OpManager Nexus host IP Address is 192.168.18.128, and the community string is private, the command would be:

snmp-server host 192.168.18.128 traps private rtr

Step 3: Creating the WAN Monitor

1. Go to Inventory-> Select IPSLA from three line menu ->Select VoIP -> Click on + (add symbol) at the top right corner
2. Enter a name for the monitor
3. Select the source router from the list of routers discovered in OpManager Nexus and then select the relevant interface of the source router
4. Specify the destination IP Address either by using the 'Search' option to pick from the discovered routers, or directly enter the IP Address and click 'Add' and submit the details.
5. You will see the summary of the monitor you are about to configure. Now click 'Apply to device' to submit the details to the device. This will take few seconds to configure.
   Refresh the page after few seconds to see the new monitor. The data is collected every hour, from the time you have configured.

To edit any of the configuration details, go to the respective template, make the changes and save the details. When you create a new monitor, the updated values take effect. When the configuration is complete, the router starts collecting the data at the specified frequency 60 seconds ( default value). OpManager Nexus updates this statistics (collected data) every hour and the reports are generated after one hour of configuration.

Configuring Test Parameters and Threshold Template for WAN Monitor

Define a template with the required WAN monitoring settings to be used for monitoring performance. The RTT template comes with pre-populated default values. OpManager Nexus uses the configured values to simulate traffic. Incase you would like to effect some changes to the values before initiating monitoring, make the changes as follows

Configuring Test Parameters

 OpManager Nexus uses the default settings specified here, 

• Payload:The default value is 24 kb. Specify an echo payload value in the range of 0 to 16384.
• Type of Service: Specify the Echo TOS in the range of 0 to 255, the default being 30.
• Operation Frequency: Specify the interval in the range of 0 to 604800 msecs. The default interval is 60. The operation frequency is the frequency with which QoS metrics are collected by the IP SLA agent on your network to determine performance.
• Operation Timeout: Specify the timeout in the range of 0 to 604800000, the default being 60 msecs. Make sure that the timeout interval is lesser than the configured operation frequency so that if the operation is not successful, that is, if there is no response from the device, or in the event of a delay, the request is timed out and the subsequent operation is launched at the configured frequency correctly.

Defining Threshold for Round Trip Time

You can define a threshold template so that you are alerted with the WAN monitor violates a specified value. Here are the steps to define a threshold template:

1. Go to Admin -> Monitoring - > IPSLA -> WAN Threshold Template.
2. Configure the upper and lower threshold limits for Round Trip time  in msecs, the range being 0 to 60000 msecs. You can also choose various notification profiles configured in OpManager Nexus to alert you.

Viewing WAN Monitor Alerts

Go to Inventory-> Select IPSLA from three line menu ->Select VoIP (Select any monitor)-> Alarms (present at the end of the page) to view the alerts raised by WAN Monitor. All the alarms are listed with the Source name, Alarm Message, Status of the Device, Technician, Device category, date and time. Click the alarm message to view the alarm history.